Keep your job and your mortgage. Keep your friends and hobbies and habits. Keep everything the same, in fact. But consider expanding your reach, especially in terms of charitable, sacrificial giving.

Of Downward Mobility and the New Evangelization

by Richard Becker

Everybody would be rich

if nobody tried

to be richer. 

And nobody would be poor

if everybody tried

to be the poorest.

And everybody would be

what he ought to be

if everybody tried to be

what he wants

the other fellow to be.

— Peter Maurin, “Better or Better Off”

Lots of money themes came together last week.

First, it was an interregnum of sorts between the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the First Sunday of Advent—the week, that is, between the Feast of Christ the King on the one hand, and the initial anticipation of the newborn King to come on the other. 

Royalty, kingship, power—it’s all there. But not the kind of power you’d expect, and not the worldly wealth that you’d associate with royal rule. 

Instead, we have the exact opposite: Last Sunday, a bereft and crucified king whose court consists of a single condemned criminal; this weekend, hints and signals of that royal birth which we know will occur in homeless squalor.

Then, the Gospel for interregnum Monday was Luke’s story about the poor widow and her two mites.

When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood” (Lk 21:1-4, NAB).

The Lord’s message is clear, and it underscores the otherworldly themes from the Sunday readings that bracket it: Temporal wealth and prestige have no lasting value. Instead, humility and sacrifice are the riches adorning the Kingdom of God.

................


Read more: www.crisismagazine.com